


Somebody Else

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst I guess, Cheating, F/M, LiveJournal Prompt, Normie Scum, Past Relationships, Seven Deadly Sins, envy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is for the Game of Ships Challenges: Seven Deadly Sins Week. Day 4: Envy</p><p>Brought to you by "Somebody Else" by The 1975</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somebody Else

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ballroompink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballroompink/gifts).



“Would you just get away from me already? I am _trying_ to make this shot, and you’re making it impossible,” she says, her long body stretching out as she tries in vain to focus on the cue ball.

Cigarette smoke wafts to and fro above the ruby red carpet, and the green and yellow Tiffany style lampshade hanging above the pool table casts its milky sallow shades on the straw of her hair. The dive bar bleeds black from its secretive corners and horseshoe red vinyl booths, but there in between the two pool tables it is as bright as a stage with only two players to strut upon it. The two tallest, the two larger-than-life pillars of muscle and mouth and hair.

“Impossible? From you? I’ve _seen_ you at the gym, there is nothing you can’t do. Except maybe look me in the eye,” her would-be companion says, all grins as he leans against the wall with something of a pirate swagger, arms folded across his broad chest and a beer bottle dangling from one hand as he regards her.

“There,” she says with a huff, standing to her full height once again and turning on her heel, and she bangs her pool cue into the old carpet, lifts her square chin and glares at the red-and-salt bearded man. He is almost her height. “Is that good enough for you?”

“It’s a start,” he grins.

“Well it _should_ be the end,” she says with a sniff as she turns away from him and chalks the tip of her cue stick.

It would sound a little pushy on the guy’s side, this conversation between the two of them, if the man weren’t so clearly star struck, if there weren’t that telltale sign Brienne gets when she’s amused and trying to hide it. The downturn at the corner of her mouth, a frown to all of the world except for _him_ , because he _knows_ it; he spent a year insulting that mouth before he realized how badly he wanted to kiss it.

Jaime sniffs and stares down into his bourbon and coke and wishes he could fling the glass across the room. If he did he’d probably get the left-handed aim wrong anyway, so instead he simply drains it and looks pointedly at the bartender pulling pints, who smiles wide-eyed at him until he looks back at Brienne.

“You’re staring,” a familiar voice says behind him.

“No I’m not,” Jaime insists with a roll of his eyes as he turns on his barstool towards the source of interruption. “I _was_ staring,” he corrects.

“What are you doing here, Jaime,” Bronn asks, and even though he’s smiling as he always is, the fucking hyena, it’s not really a question. It’s a polite way to say _You look fucking pathetic sitting at your ex-girlfriend’s favorite bar._

“I am getting drunk, Bronn, what are _you_ doing here? Here to fuck the bartender? She’s cute, I’ll give you that,” he says, watching her grin and bite her lip as she turns away to grab Jaime’s bourbon.

“No. _I_ came with that lovely thing over there,” he says, nodding his head towards the sudden outburst of high feminine squealing.

Startled, Jaime turns in time to see Margaery dance her way to the pool tables in heels and a dress, completely out of place here where it’s all blue jeans and work boots, right down to Brienne who’s in her weekend best. Jaime’s ex glances back at her new admirer, the distracted flit and flicker of high-bright blue while Margaery shrieks _I haven’t seen you in forever_ and flings her arms up and around Brienne’s broad shoulders.

 _If only I could say the same_ , Jaime thinks, but here in his headspace he cannot deny the frequency of the dreams and the thoughts and the regrets. He sees Brienne plenty, even months after breaking her heart. Even when he looks in the mirror he sees her, plain thing that she is. She’s a lost opportunity and he is like a cat swiping for a toy and missing. Another way he’s crippled. _What_ am _I doing here?_

“So what, you’re fucking Margaery Tyrell on the side now, is that it?” He flicks his eyes up to the bartender and nods his mute thanks when she slides another bourbon and coke in front of him, leaving a wet ring smear on the bar top beneath it, the wet track of a weeping star.

“On the side? I wish, exhausted as I am,” Bronn says with a sigh, though he flashes a grin at the bartender when she slides him two pints of beer and a mostly full pitcher. “Keep it open for me, would you,” he says, slapping down a debit card before drinking a third of his beer. “No, it looks like I got completely wrapped into this one somehow. And I mean completely. Tampons under the bathroom sink, hair in the drain, the whole nine fucking yards,” he says, and then he slides a sly look to Jaime as he spins around to rest his back against the bar. “But we are _definitely_ fucking.”

“I see,” Jaime says, rolling his eyes before sliding another glance to the billiard tables.

Margaery is like a butterfly between two tall trees, no drooping arcing willows but tall straight-spine sentinels, and she is the only thing fine boned between them. He thinks of delicacy and the demure spread of thighs, the skilled sigh of seduction that he was so used to before Brienne. There is none of that there on _that_ woman, none whatsoever, and he can still recall how the simple honesty of her sexual appetite floored him and made him insatiable for more.

The bearded man with the wild eyes murmurs something that makes Margaery throw her head back and laugh, that makes Brienne duck her head to hide a smile. Jaime drinks deeply.

“Why do you do that?” the wild man says, deep boom bark and scratchy thunder, and he doesn’t go so far as to lift her chin but he does nudge her shoulder to gain her attention, and he uncurls his index from around his beer to point at her face. “Why do you hide when you laugh?”

She’s still almost _-_ smiling, the down-curl of a feather after escaping a down comforter, but a thousand times bitten is a million times shy. Jaime wonders how many of the teeth-marks in her are his, and while the thought should shame him it also makes him that much more everything else. Greedy, possessive, empty, far far away from her and evidently replaced. Still, despite this man’s tongue-rolling-out-of-his-mouth adoration, she’s suspicious. _She was suspicious of me too_ he thinks just before he forces himself to forget with another long swallow of whiskey.

“Why do you care?” she volleys.

The man frowns, truly perplexed, and he shrugs, a big bear of a thing that makes him look all the larger. “Why wouldn’t I?”

And there, the no holds barred smile, wide mouthed and toothy, the smile that used to belong to him.

“Brienne, look at you. You need a beer,” Margaery says grandly, promptly ignored though this time around she doesn’t seem to mind not being the center of attention.

She takes her friend’s empty bottle from the little side table and minces back towards the bar, and Jaime can’t help but notice that Big Beard over there doesn’t even glance away to watch Margaery’s little hip-shake-shimmy. Brienne doesn’t look either, not towards Margaery or the bar, not towards Jaime, but she does lift her eyebrows and her pointed finger to argue some point or another that Big Beard has contested _. I’m better looking than that idiot_ , he thinks, and he’s still staring in their direction when Margaery steps into his periphery and snaps her fingers two inches away from his nose.

“Hey, bright eyes, stalk much?” she says.

Even though they were friendly once upon a time, before break ups and the old it’s not you it’s me but it’s really you, the ice in her voice proves that Brienne well and truly won custody of their friends in the split. It would certainly explain why he hasn’t seen Bronn in so long.

“It’s a free country, Margie, she doesn’t get every old bar we used to go to.”

“She _literally_ owns stock in this bar, moron, and you know that. Has she even seen you yet?”

“No,” he says, hating to admit the truth. She used to find him with her eyes and her feather smile before he had even fully entered a room. Now, nothing.

“Well thank god for small favors. She’s in a great mood and if you ruin that I will slap you upside the head,” Margaery says, and then she turns to cinnamon and cream as she lifts her gaze to Bronn, who passes her a full beer around Jaime’s back. “Hey, _thank_ you baby, can I get another glass while you’re at it?”

“Anything for you, kitten,” Bronn says.

Jaime thinks he might vomit.

“Who is that guy anyways? I uh, I overheard he goes to her gym?” he says, trying for light and airy, sounding to his ears like pathetic normie scum.

Margaery’s snort and smirk confirm it.

“I don’t know, he said his name’s Tormund. I swear to god, he cannot take his _eyes_ off her.  It’s freaking adorable. I’ve never seen her smile so much off of a soccer field.”

Right on cue Tormund Big Bastard Beard-face says something, and there is the loud ringing peal of what Jaime knows only too well, as precious and rare as it is. A full bellied, taken-by-surprise laugh right out of Brienne. _It took me months before she opened up to me like that,_ he thinks, shaking his head and closing his eyes as he rubs a hand across his forehead. He’s got better looks and more money than that guy; better goddamn _hair,_ that’s for sure, and yet that crazy eyed fucker is grinning proudly as he gazes at Brienne while she recovers. _Bright fucking red brillo pad_ _beard,_ he thinks, and then he remembers calling Brienne a straw-headed scarecrow the first six months they both worked at the same firm. _But still, towards the end there I was making her happy._

“I’ve made her smile more than he has,” he says. “I am _very_ charming, in case you forgot.”

“You _cheated_ on her, Jaime,” Margaery snaps as she shakes a bit of spilled beer off her fingers before taking the second pint of beer from Bronn. “I don’t care how much you made her smile before you went back to Cersei, you made her cry for nearly four months.”

 _Four months, is that all,_ he wants to say, lifting his eyes back to where Brienne is now trying to teach Tormund one of her trick shots. _I’ve been miserable for almost a year._ There’s an awful lot of stretched limbs and long muscles, a lot of deep timbre mutterings and the only slighter higher pitch of her reply as she corrects his form, and then there’s the light press of her big hand on the low of his back. It’s more intimacy and trust in the five fucking minutes since they’ve met than there was in the first weeks after she decided to accept his invitations to dinner. _Christ could she eat._

“Look, he can’t even fucking play pool right,” he says, gesturing with his prosthetic to where Tormund has missed the trick shot.

“Yes, well, _you_ were always _very_ good at pool in your time, Jaime,” Margaery says over her shoulder as she heads back to her friend. “But you were really fucking shitty at keeping your dick in your pants, and at the end of the day that’s basically all a girl really wants.”

“What, you want me to piss my pants then? Does that count? Taking it out for a piss?” he calls after her, and though he wants her attention Margaery laughs again at that very moment and pulls Brienne around so her back is to Jaime, and his drunken slurring is lost to her ears. Because that’s all he wound up doing, that night so long ago, was pissing, in the end. He pissed it all away. _What’s new with that, though_ , he can hear his father say.

He can only stomach another forty minutes or so of the one-sided banter that somehow develops into a mutual conversation, of the way the down-curl of his little feather, his old favorite little secret spreads out into an out and proud smile that makes her mouth even wider. She told him she loved him with that mouth and now she’s using it to give out her number. Jaime practically sees it happen in slow motion, the way her lips and teeth shape the numbers as her admirer grins and taps them into his phone.

“Just go home, brother,” Bronn says after returning from playing and losing a game to the happy new couple in order to refill his pitcher. “There’s nothing for you here, anymore. But hey, I’ll give you a call tomorrow. We can practice your new swing at the stadium.”

“Sounds scintillating,” Jaime says dryly, tossing two twenties on the bar before he stands and lurches to the side slightly. “Real fuckin’ fun,” he says, pulling up the Uber app as he smooth-as-dirt strolls to the door.

“I could be real fun, too,” says the bartender as he passes her by. “In case you’re interested in sticking around until the end of my shift?”

He glances towards the back of the bar where Brienne and Tormund are practically sitting on the pool table, side by side and near enough that none of that green-yellow light bleeds in between their bodies. _That was me, you prick,_ he thinks. _Stupid fucking bastard,_ he thinks, and he’s not sure who he’s talking to anymore.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he mutters with what he knows is a handsome smile, a smile that wasn’t enough in the end, not when weighed against betrayal.

“You sure?” the bartender asks him with a pretty smile.

Jaime hums, low and rambling in the back of his throat as he appraises her. Lean and lovely, slender arms and long hair. Perfectly lovely. But then again, Cersei had been perfectly lovely that night too.

“I’d love to, but my heart’s just not in it,” he says though perhaps he means another organ altogether, because even though his wasted heart betrayed him all those many months ago, his body refused.

“Suit yourself, handsome,” she says with a shrug.

“I’m not suited for anyone these days,” he says, but she’s not even listening anymore, and he’s not really surprised, so instead he simply turns and walks away.


End file.
